Cruisin' - Day 4 - Noumea

The original schedule had us going to Isle of Pines first, then Noumea, but on the morning of the second day, we were advised that the order had been changed ‘for operational reasons’. Our shore tours were to be switched around, and everything else was to progress as usual.

We awoke to overcast skies, but warm and somewhat humid temperatures

And a tug boat, if required.

We had booked the ‘Dumbea River Kayaking’ tour, to include two hours of kayaking, plus a swim. Our departure was at 9am, and we were required to meet at 8:50am. We were actually off the boat nearly 45mins early, so we went for a walk around the block to kill some time.

Hard to get lost, what with the ship dominating the horizon.

When we got back, around 20 minutes later, we were informed that it had rained solidly for the past two days and that the river was pretty swollen and fast-running. They were cancelling the morning kayaking tour, and asked if we were happy to switch to the afternoon tour, if it was available. Of course, we replied. Ten minutes later, they advised that the afternoon tour was 50/50 at best to go ahead, so they were cancelling it. We could join up with another of the tours if there was space.

We asked if there were any seats left in the ‘Noumea in a Nutshell’ tour, departing at 9am, and indeed there were enough seats for us on the bus due to depart first. A ticket was quickly written out for us, and off we went. We even got the back row on the bus – normally you have to be first on, not last, to get those seats!

With a brief introduction from our tour guide Michel, a local of Polynesian extraction, we set off towards the Church de L’Immaculee Conception, one of the older churches in Noumea.

Mary, not a cross, tops this church.

Recently refurbished, it has a convent and a monastery attached – Michel’s school teachers were nuns from the convent. It was founded by missionaries who prayed to Mary when caught in a storm, who vowed to build a church in her honour should they be saved. Inside were stained glass windows, some old, some new, and statues of the local saints, including Sainte Therese. She had to travel to Rome to be granted permission to become a nun so young, but ended up dying young. Nevertheless, many miracles have been attributed to her and to Mary. Pilgrims gather each August 15 to mark Assumption Day.

From the choir stalls

From there, we went to the lookout at Ouen Toro and watched paragliders riding the thermals (and going quietly green with envy). There’s an excellent view over the bays back towards Centre Ville (Town Centre), and a WWII memorial. The day before, the lookout had been shrouded in fog, so we were very lucky with the weather.

Next stop was Anse Vata, where we had morning tea (tea, coffee, some ghastly sweet apple something) and time to browse the overpriced tourist shops. (We did get a couple of t-shirts for the boys, and some postcards and stamps.)

Back on the bus, our final stop was FOL (I’ve no idea what it stands for, EDIT: Google says:  La Fédération des Oeuvres Laïques de Nouvelle-Calédonie), a lookout above the town. The FOL was the town’s main theatre until the roof was badly damaged by rain(?) in 2011. Political wrangling means that the building remains closed and is being further damaged by rain. Our bus driver, Thierry, did an outstanding job negotiating the bus past the nearly full carpark, and executing a nine-point turn to get us back facing the way we came in. (He got a well-deserved round of applause.) By then my camera’s battery decided it had had enough, so these pics are from my phone.

On the left, St Joseph's, with its back to us, and the harbour in the background.

Yup, that's our boat mid-shot. Big, innit?

The walls of the FOL are covered with commissioned and uncommissioned grafitti.

Other things we learned about Noumea:

Much of the town is built on reclaimed land, and the harbour was similarly hand built by convicts. As were the two main churches - St Joseph’s Cathedral, the main Catholic church, and the adjacent Protestant church. These are the two main religions of the locals, the missionaries having been very effective. Like in Vanuatu, many of the Melanesian women wear “Mother Hubbard” type dresses, the rather shapeless, matronly dresses favoured by the missionaries.

New Caledonia was a French penal colony around the same time Australia was an English one. Napoleon’s Josephine was concerned about the highly skewed ratio of men to women in the colony, so arranged for an orphanage for girls to be established here.

When the Americans arrived during WWII, using New Caledonia as both a base and for R&R, they more than doubled the population of Noumea overnight (from 16,000 to 33,000). There was a further increase in the population soon over the next couple of years as the GIs got friendly with the local women.

Noumea presently has around 100,000 people, or 40% of the country’s population. And almost everyone has a car. The streets in Centre Ville are a maze of one way streets with a few traffic lights, and plenty of pedestrian crossings which are generally respected by drivers if you’re brave enough to step out on one. Despite what I’d read, many of the shops remain open through the siesta (12-2pm).

The civil war was around 1984 which explains why our potential 4^th form French class field trip was scotched (I was in Form 4, or Year 9, in Christchurch in 1984). New Caledonia is about three-quarters of the way through a twenty-year-long transfer of power, culminating in a referendum in 2018. Michel said that it is very uncertain which way the referendum for independence will go, as people change their mind daily.

The city has pretty good infrastructure, and is much more developed than Port Vila, the capital of Vanuatu. This could be because it is still part of France, unlike Vanuatu which was granted independence in 1980. It’s also likely because of its extensive nickel mines that have brought wealth and industry.

The heavy rain of the past two days has closed roads to the south, and had turned one of the main city streets into a river-cum-waterfall. Apparently Noumea, on the southern peninsula of the main island, Grand Terre, doesn’t get a huge amount of rain generally, and is unusually verdant at the moment.

We returned to the boat for lunch (the boys were flagging), and then I went back into town to find a postbox to mail the postcards we’d scrawled while on the bus, and to go for a bit of a wander. It turned out the kitschy tourist market at the ship terminal was about a third the price of the Anse Vata strip. I considered getting a Hawaiian shirt for JD, but they were all made in Thailand, and much of the other fabric goods (sarongs, bags, etc) were made in India or similar. There was some locally made jewellery, so from them I got a malachite necklace (to go with my malachite earrings I got in New York), and a shell sarong-tying majigger carved from shell.

Au revoir, Noumea.

We have cancelled our dinner booking for tonight (we’ll eat at the buffet) so we can see the ‘Aerial Acrobatic Show’, where the performers will be suspended in various ways from the arch over the aft pool. (Ky and I saw them rehearsing at lunchtime, and are very keen to see the show.)